CBO delivers blow to health plan

The Congressional Budget Office, described as the judge, jury and final arbiter on health care reform, cut the legs out from Sen. Kennedy’s health reform plan, one of two that will begin moving through the Senate.

The summary table at the end says it all: a six percentage point drop in the number of uninsured — from 49 million in 2010 to 37 million in 2019 — is all you get for $1-plus trillion.

What we’re probably witnessing is the opening act of a re-run of the fight over Clinton’s health care plan 15 years ago. New cast, same story.

Remember Guantanamo? Every day Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell takes to the floor to issue a morning blast on health care, just as he did when he forced the White House to back off on transferring the island prisoners to the states. He opens with the caveat that the health care system is broken, but Republicans have a better way to fix it. Most GOP plans are at complete odds with what Democrats want, following “consumer-driven” models of tax credits that former President Bush proposed but which never went anywhere.

Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mt, has been laboring for months trying to find a way to bring Republicans on board. He won a big victory with President Obama’s insistence that the reforms be paid for; but paying for health reform may just kill it. Paying means higher taxes. Everyone wants health reform, but nobody really wants to pay for it. At the end of the day, it will be a miracle if more than a handful of Republicans get on board.

Recall that Republicans and Bush did not “pay for” their LBJ-style expansion of Medicare, the new prescription drug benefit. They just put it on the tab.

Watch Democrats adopt the same arguments Republicans used to make: that we’re not talking about actual cuts in health spending, just a reduction in the rate of growth. Remember how Republicans used to trash CBO for not using “dynamic scoring” for tax cuts, which would incorporate higher revenue from economic feedback loops? Now Democrats are grating under CBO’s refusal to award large savings to such vague things as preventive care, coordinated care and health information technology that the believe, but cannot promise, will restrain spending over time.